Change universities to change capitalism | Opinion

America’s current wealth distribution, with the top 1 percent holding 16 times the wealth than the bottom 50 percent (roughly $34.23 trillion compared to $2.08 trillion), is at odds with the idea of a fair and just society....

Producing a truly more humane and effective system will also require changing American higher education.  Research universities in particular are sources of new ideas and discoveries, incubators for business and technology, cultural and artistic centers, and local, national and global economic engines....

To begin with, higher education institutions will have to do things very differently from the way they do them now.  Changes in “doing” will require them to recognize that as they now function, they — particularly research universities — constitute a major part of the problem, not a significant part of the solution.

Read the full op-ed here.